Wednesday, 17 January 2018

Second game of 2018 - the set up

This game is a re-run of the first game fought this year but with the three players taking control of another army. The scenario is a simple one. It is a late SYW affair between a small well led Prussian army comprising an excellent mix of troops including a high proportion of elites and a much larger, poorly led allied (2 player) Austro-Russian army of average composition. Victory will be achieved by forcing the enemy into submission.Using Piquet rules the quality of command is more easily built in than in other rules. The Prussian C-in-C is classed as superior with two Brilliant Leader cards added to his sequence deck, whilst the ally's C-in-C is classed as poor with one Command Indecision card added to his sequence deck. The Prussian player also deploys up second.For those unfamiliar with Piquet, a sequence deck is a deck of roughly 24 - 30 cards that governs each side's move sequence. The sequence deck of each side is tailored to reflect what it was good and bad at. Each deck comprises cards that govern the movement rate of troops by arm (infantry, cavalry and artillery), how often troops can shoot, resolve melee, rally, change formation, etc.; there are also do nothing cards, and army morale check cards. Each turn the players get a random number of initiative points (up to about 20) which they use to turn cards from their sequence deck and spend to activate troops using them as they are turned. A Brilliant Leader card is a wild card, redefined each time it is turned, giving the army greater flexibility and freedom of action; a Command Indecision card reduces the army's current initiative to zero and effectively ends the player's go when it is turned.Working on the assumption that dice rolls even out, all other pre-deployment dice rolls, to discover sub-commander ability and troop quality, will be determined by the players in the usual way. The allied C-in-C (the final arbiter in their sides distribution of initiative points) will be decided by coin toss.The armies are quite small, with each commander controlling 14 units or less. The OOBs are as follows:

Because the forces are smaller than those I usually deploy I decided to clutter the table with lots of terrain. Here's the table I came up with. This terrain should localise the combats and allow some clever manoeuvring of the forces - it did in the first game. The table is 12' x 6'.

The Austro-Russians will deploy first. Their initial deployment zone will be approximately 2' on table and 18" from the flank edges. Within that zone, they can deploy as they like. The Prussians deploy after the Austro-Russians anywhere in a similar zone (on the other side of the table).

We will start to fight this battle tonight (it will probably go to two sessions). A report will follow.

They do look at bit like eggs in the photo but they're not. They are white pom poms used to quickly mark units that have fired - unlike cotton wool, the fibres don't get stuck to figures and their bases.